Chapter 3
Gabe woke the following morning and stretched. He stood up, pulled on a pair of boxer shorts, and grabbed hold of the bottle of water he’d left on his bedside table. Then he climbed the ladder attached to the wall of his bedroom, opened the metal hatch to the roof and breathed in the familiar salty smell of the sea. He loved being able to do this and knew it was a luxury few could enjoy. He stepped up to the roof terrace to breathe in the warm air. Sighing deeply, he gazed out at the rolling waves and took a deep swig from his bottle. He recalled his kiss with Daisy in the car the evening before.
As much as he missed his research, he did relish coming home to Jersey. Even more so this time now that he’d discovered Daisy working at the Encore. He knew he wouldn’t have mentioned his parents’ names to her when they were away, because he never spoke about his parents by name. Too many years growing up with people changing their attitudes towards him when they discovered that his mother was a renowned beauty and his father a well-known singer had put paid to that before he reached his teens. So it had been an unexpected surprise having Daisy turning up at the hotel.
Daisy. He couldn’t help smiling at the thought of her pretty face, so shocked to see him standing there talking to his nan. Then again, he must have looked stunned to see her working there. He suspected he was still in shock. After so many months trying to put her out of his mind and get over his feelings for her, to see her behind the reception area was unexpected to say the least. He rested back in a chair and raised his bare feet on the circular granite wall. Something tickled the side of his heel and he moved to see it was a ladybird. He reached down, waiting for the bug to step onto his finger before holding up his hand to let it fly away. He couldn’t help smiling. He hadn’t felt this carefree or happy since Vietnam. Daisy, he thought closing his eyes. It was easy to imagine being back in Vietnam with her on a hot morning like this one.
He swatted a fly away from his face and realised that someone was calling his name.
‘Gabriel!’ his grandmother shouted from the garden.
He peered over the side of the tower, to see her with a hand either side of her mouth. ‘Darling, are you coming to join me for breakfast this morning?’
He nodded, happy to be able to share times like these with her. ‘Give me five minutes.’
Hurrying back down to his room, he quickly showered and changed into a T-shirt and khaki shorts. Pushing his feet into worn flip flops, he ran outside to join her where he knew she’d be waiting at the table on her terrace.
‘Good morning,’ he said, bending down to kiss her lined cheek. ‘How are you today?’
‘All the better knowing you’re so close and that I can have you all to myself for a bit.’ She lifted the metal cover from his plate to reveal a full English breakfast. ‘There’s seeded toast under that napkin and I made you a pot of coffee, though why you prefer that when you could have Earl Grey like me, I don’t know.’
‘I suppose I must have got used to drinking it when I was in LA.’
She shook her head and smiled. ‘You do look a bit like one of those beach bums sometimes, Gabriel,’ she teased. ‘Especially when you let your hair grow longer like it is now.’
‘It’s easier,’ he said, deciding not to bother telling her that he’d actually had it cut recently. He tucked into his breakfast with relish. Nan was a pretty good cook when it came to breakfasts, at least.
‘Do you mind terribly having to come back here to work at the hotel, darling?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve been working without a break for a few months now, so they understand me taking a little time away from the project.’ He shrugged. ‘It can get too intense if it’s all you ever think about. It is important to me, but sometimes it’s good to step away and be forced back into the real world.’ He swallowed another mouthful of his food and, unable to resist, asked, ‘So, what do you think of Daisy, Nan? I could tell by you inviting her here that you like her, but now you know we were—’ he hesitated to find the right word ‘—close in Vietnam, does that change your feelings about her?’
‘No, of course not,’ she said immediately. ‘There’s a definite chemistry between you two, probably a little too much.’ She rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘I don’t want either of you to get hurt, though.’
‘Why would we?’ he asked, knowing exactly why but needing her to voice his concerns so that he couldn’t ignore them.
‘We don’t know how long Daisy will want to stay here. Even if she is happy working at the Encore, how long will it be before you have to return to wherever it was you were last working?’
‘South Africa. And I should only be here for a month,’ he admitted quietly.
‘You see, that’s not long at all. You work away for months at a time. Do you think it would be fair on Daisy to expect her to wait here for you each time?’
He could see where she was coming from. ‘Maybe she could come with me in some capacity,’ he said, although what exactly she would do he wasn’t quite sure. ‘She’s an artist, Nan, she can work anywhere, surely?’
‘I don’t doubt it, but what if she doesn’t want a life following you around the world? How well do you know her, anyway? Would you consider giving everything up for her?’
He shook his head. ‘We haven’t got to that point, Nan,’ he said.
‘But you do like her, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘A lot.’
‘I really like her. We spent some incredible weeks together in Vietnam and then went our separate ways. I guess I was hoping we could carry on from where we left off.’
He waited for her to agree, or argue, but instead all she did was look down vacantly at the scrambled egg on toast she’d barely touched. ‘Not necessarily,’ she murmured eventually.
Gabe put down his knife and fork and rested one hand on his grandmother’s back. ‘Are you all right?’ He’d never seen her act like this before. It was out of character for her to appear down; even if she was upset, she always put a brave face on things. ‘Why does it matter to you how close Daisy and I are? Are you thinking about something that happened to you? Between you and Grandpa Lorenzo?’ He hoped she might finally be opening up to him about her mysterious past.
She nodded slowly. ‘I suppose I am. I resented him for something he did, something that I should have forced him to deal with, but instead I stupidly let my pride get the better of me. I ended up missing out on, well, I don’t really know, but it was impulsive and short-sighted of me, I know that now.’ She grabbed hold of his forearm. ‘When you’re young you assume you have all the time in the world to put things right, but life isn’t that simple sometimes.’
She smiled at him, but he could see it was forced and that she was trying to lighten the mood that had dipped so rapidly between them. ‘All I’m saying is, be sure of your feelings for Daisy before making any decisions. Try to remember that she will have her own ambitions for her future that might not fit in with yours, and if you want to be together try to find a compromise that works for you both before giving up on a future you might otherwise miss out on.’
‘I will, Nan,’ he said. ‘I promise.’
She smiled and patted his cheek. ‘Enough serious chat for now,’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s eat and make the best of this glorious July morning.’
He nodded. ‘Yes, let’s do that.’ He gave her a quizzical look. It unnerved him to hear her speaking so seriously about something, especially when referring to her past. She never spoke about anything from when she was young.
He could hear the phone ringing inside the house and stood up, but before he could step away from the table, Anna, the housekeeper, came outside holding the phone.
‘Madam, it’s Mr Rick on the phone. He says Miss Francesca is thinking she might not go away after all.’
His grandmother sighed and held out her hand to take the phone. ‘Thank you, Anna.’ She pushed her plate away and lifted the phone to her ear. ‘Francesca, what is all this nonsense?’ There was a silence while she listened to what his mother was telling her. ‘Absolutely not. I’m fine, and your son has generously taken the time to come back to Jersey and help me run the hotel. So, you will pack your bags and get on that flight and stop all of this. You do it every time you have to go away on location. It’s stage fright, nothing more. You’ll be fine once you get there.’ She raised her eyes heavenward.
Gabe smiled. He knew this routine by heart; he’d experienced it for as long as he could remember.
‘Gabriel will be there to collect you.’ She shook her head and pointed at her watch.
‘Two-thirty,’ he mouthed.
He zoned out from the rest of the call to finish off his meal. Lydia soon rang off and placed the phone down on the table. ‘I don’t know why she puts herself through this,’ she said.
‘She loves it when she gets there. And when she comes home after filming has ended and she has something new to entertain her guests with back at the hotel.’
‘Yes, she does.’ Lydia took a sip of her tea and grimaced. ‘That’s cold now. I have to feel a bit sorry for your mother though,’ she said, laughing.
‘Why?’
‘Because each time she has one of her turns your father phones me. She knows I’ve got enough experience in films that she can’t argue with me. It always infuriates her.’
‘Poor Mum,’ Gabe said, smiling. He was relieved someone was able to stop her dramatics. He loved his mum very much, but she could be exhausting and as much as his father could be difficult to live with, with his roving eye and slight excesses with alcohol, Gabe knew that most of the time they had a great relationship, and for that he was very grateful.
‘Do you think Mum should have married someone who doted on her and followed her to her locations?’
His grandmother nodded. ‘Yes. She needs that hero-worship more than most and she doesn’t get it from your father because he’s too busy demanding it for himself. Mind you, I think at times like now that’s good for her.’ She laughed. ‘How you turned out to be so placid and happy with your own company, I don’t know.’
‘Is that what I am?’ he asked. He was different to his parents, that was for certain. ‘I’m just relieved I never wanted to go into the acting business too. Can you imagine what it would have been like to have three of us involved in show business in the family?’
‘Four,’ she said, tapping his arm. ‘What about me?’
‘But you’re not a drama queen, Nan.’
‘No, but I probably used to be when I was younger.’
‘I have a feeling you would have secretly loved to come from a normal family like Daisy. She must think we’re all a little crazy.’ Lydia laughed. ‘Poor girl.’
‘What’s normal, though?’ he said, realising how little he knew about Daisy’s family, or her past. Then again, he thought, he hadn’t divulged very much about his own family either. If he had she wouldn’t be working at his family’s hotel. He was glad they’d mainly stuck to discussing their travels in Vietnam, otherwise he was pretty certain Daisy would have taken a job elsewhere.
Lydia raised her eyebrows. ‘I think we’re a little less normal than your average family, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I can’t argue with that.’
Lydia ate a little more, then put her fork down with a sigh. ‘We have an anniversary party to deal with while your parents are away,’ she said. ‘I know that the girls from Lapins de Lune took over a wedding reception for us immediately after the fire, but I think that maybe if that young builder… Luke, was it?’ Gabe nodded. ‘Well, if he completes the work quickly then we could hold the next event at the Encore.’
‘Lapins de Lune?’ The name rang a bell, but Gabe couldn’t quite place it.
She took a sip of her tea. ‘You remember, it’s that events business.’ When he shook his head, she added, ‘They specialise in vintage linen and crockery for weddings and other parties, and they do event planning. The Le Lievre girl, you know, the one whose mother is a sculptor, well it’s her and her friend Jessica Moon. They started the business a couple of years ago, and after the fire took over the reception for a couple.’
Gabe could picture them and nodded. ‘Did they expect to host this party too?’
‘No, but your mum suggested that maybe they might do so, if Luke didn’t manage to finish the work on time.’
Gabe was all for helping others, but on this occasion his parents’ hotel needed the money. Summer was their most profitable time and what they made between May and September had to keep them going for the rest of the year. ‘I’ll help Luke with the work if I have to,’ he said. ‘We can’t afford to turn away any more business, Nan. These events are worth a lot of money to us.’
‘I know. Give Luke a call today then and see if there’s anything you can do.’
‘I will.’
After they’d finished, he gave his grandmother a lift to the hotel so that she could run through the bookings with his mum before they left. Phoning Luke, he was relieved to discover that with a little extra help from him the work should be completed in time for the couple’s big day.
He walked around the back of the hotel through the colourful rose garden to check on the work being done to the orangery. His father had sent him photos of the fire damage and it had shocked Gabe at the time, but now – a couple of weeks later and after quite a bit of hard work from Luke and his team – it didn’t look nearly so bad. Burnt wooden frames had been replaced, the walls had been plastered and now just needed a little paint. It was going to be fine, he thought, relieved for his parents’ sake.
‘Looks much better now, doesn’t it?’ His dad asked, coming up to stand next to him, a pipe clenched between his teeth. Gabe couldn’t help smiling. How the constant puffing on that thing hadn’t ruined his father’s singing, he couldn’t imagine.
‘You must have got quite a shock on the night of the fire?’ Gabe asked.
‘It could have been so much worse,’ Rick said. ‘Though your mum nearly had hysterics, especially as we were ninety per cent full with guests at the time. It did show us that our fire drills worked though, which was something.’
Rick put his arm around Gabe’s shoulders. It was good to be alone with his father for once. Gabe loved his mother but she always demanded so much attention, and if she was with them then his father never got the chance to say his piece.
‘We’re very grateful to you for coming all the way to Jersey to help your grandmother.’
‘I’m happy to spend time with her and I needed to step back from the project, anyway. Hopefully while I’m away I’ll come up with ideas to raise more funds to keep it going too.’
They began walking to the back of the hotel along the gravel pathways that meandered through the geometric line of tiny pools, some bridged with a large slab as a way to cross from one side to the other.
‘Your grandmother would kill me for saying so, but despite how well she looks, she is getting older and I don’t like to think of her being left to run this place on her own. When I signed up to do this tour, I thought your mother would be staying in Jersey and the two of them could work together.’
This was news to Gabe. ‘So when did she receive her offer for the part in the film?’
‘Only a month ago, when another actress fell ill and had to pull out. Your mum was delighted, of course.’
‘You can’t blame her,’ Gabe said, picturing his mother’s joy to be offered the part. ‘She’s always fretting about work drying up.’
Rick took the pipe from his mouth and nodded. ‘I know, but we always agreed that one of us would stay behind if the other had an offer of work.’
Gabriel stopped walking. ‘Dad, it’s fine. I’m thrilled she’s got something to look forward to and Nan and I will be perfectly happy here looking after everything until you both get back home again. Don’t worry about it, really.’
Rick pulled Gabriel into a tight hug. ‘You’re a good boy, Gabe. We’re very lucky to have you as a son.’
His father always became sentimental when he was about to go away and Gabe knew how he hated goodbyes. He suspected it was because his father had lost both his parents at an early age. For him, though, his parents going away to work was so much a part of his life that it never worried him at all. ‘Everything will be fine. You two go and forget about us. Enjoy your tour, have fun, and we’ll have a party to celebrate once you both get back.’
‘Great idea, my boy, I’ll mention that to your mother.’